Pixérécourt, (René-Charles) Guilbert de

Pixérécourt, (René-Charles) Guilbert de (1773–1844), French dramatist, who alone or in collaboration wrote nearly 100 plays and for 30 years provided the staple fare of the secondary theatres. He led an unsettled life until in 1797 one of his many early plays, Les Petits Auvergnats, was put on. It was successful enough to persuade him to devote the rest of his life to the theatre, and in 1798 he produced Victor; ou, L'Enfant de la forêt, the first of the long series of plays by which he is chiefly remembered and for which he himself coined the name melodrama. The most successful of these, which earned him the nickname of ‘the Corneille of the boulevards’, was Coelina; ou, L'Enfant du mystère (1800), which, in a translation by Thomas Holcroft as A Tale of Mystery (1802), was the first melodrama seen on the English stage. The success of his plays made Pixérécourt a wealthy man, but he was ruined when the Théâtre de la Gaîté, of which he was a director and where many of his most successful plays were produced, was burned down in 1835. This disaster, joined to the effects of a serious illness, ended his career, and he retired to Nancy to die a lingering death. His work typifies the mixture of ferocity and idealism of the French Revolution, when blood and tears were shed with equal facility. He was aware of the literary shortcomings of his plays, but believed sincerely in their importance as a vehicle for moral teaching. He took great trouble over his productions and settings, often inventing new machinery and spectacular effects, for, as he himself said, he wrote for ‘those who cannot read’—a large and enthusiastic audience. Pixérécourt also had an immense influence in England, where most of his plays were seen soon after they appeared, their main characteristics being preserved in the contemporary toy theatre.